Look Away
by ElasticBobaTurtle
Summary: Sasuke doesn't know what childhood is, but Sakura knows it's too late to teach him. [Sasusaku, futurefic]


* * *

She is disgusted that he still looks away from her, but keeps her jaw clenched tight; tight-wire-shut, and holds the words at bay. He looks off at a vague spot above her left shoulder and she steadies her gaze to focus on his face, even as it burns her eyes terribly. _This is for you, _she thinks to one of the many ghosts that linger inside of her and will never stop haunting.When she joins them, she will haunt _with _them, and it will be a joyous time, a great time full of wisps and the white of regrets, the red of permanent stains. 

She almost smiles at the thought.

"Will you walk me home tonight?" she asks suddenly, and he looks almost startled but stops himself just in time. _Hah_, she thinks, _wasn't that a close one?_

He looks at her with hard dark eyes and a cold line for a mouth, arms slack at his side, itching for the deep pockets that are no longer there. _Cloaks don't have pockets_, she prompts him but he never listened before, so why should he start now? She smiles sweetly.

"You know I can't," he says, finally. His voice is a lot rougher than before, with cracks running through so large she could look into them and see his soul. She doesn't though, because she doesn't want to _see _it. It's not worth looking at, she knows.

"And why not?" she queries, innocently, hands clasped in front of her. It makes her look like a little girl, just like the old days. She's twelve years old again. He glares into the distance.

"Because they'd kill me," he says.

"Oh, I don't think they'd do _that_," she laughs breezily, _more like they'd interrogate you to hell and back and poke needles into your body and worm out all those little secrets you try so hard to hide. Every single one. And they might find the time to take your eyes, just maybe if you're lucky. _"Come on," she says, "just this once, because you never _did_ before."

He looks away, hands still twitching. _No pockets, _she sings to herself, a little triumphantly.

She starts off at a light hop, takes a few steps and then looks back to where he is standing, looking after her with familiar dark brows drawn. She cocks her head imploringly.

"Just this once, I promise. This is the first and the last."

She begins to walk again and is mildly delighted to hear his scratching footsteps following reluctantly after. A smile twitches on her lips, but she stows it away for sunnier days.

"So how have you been?" she asks, listening to his feet scraping against the gravel. He does not respond. _A touchy spot, is it? _

"It's been a long time. How many years?" she asks the trees by the roadside. "Six? Seven?"

"Nine," he says, quietly.

"Nine? Longer than I would have thought," she says, her voice carrying on the faint evening breeze. She skips a little, feels the vapor tingling fingers of youth on her skin. It fades fast but lasts beyond. _Bet you've never felt it, have you? Of course you haven't. You don't know what childhood is._

She feels his eyes boring into her back but does not return the gaze, and it makes her happy to know she can. She breathes the night air in deeply. It smells good, warm, and beautiful, like apples and cinnamon and cricket's chirps tumbled in the washing machine. It's strange, because usually summer nights in Konoha smell of hay and dry dust, of itch and sneeze.

But tonight is different, because it signifies the end of something big and undefined, the beginning of something. Both of them feel it (how can they not? it pulls like gravity), but only one of them knows _what _it is, is wise enough to understand and brave enough to endure.

A bell calls in the distance, brazen and mellow, the call of a father. _I'm home._

She stops walking and perks her head to listen, to breathe in the sound and let it flow through her tired, pumping veins. He stands rigid against it. It is much too familiar, much too sweet. It sounds too much like home.

The gates are looming closer now, and the dust on the road is more refined, worn by thousands—no, millions—of tramping feet. It scatters in the wind, powders her cheeks softly, tenderly. She needs no make-up, because the dust blushes her cheeks to the perfect bronze, and the wind tussles her hair so that she needs no blow dryer or curling iron.

There are only a few yards left to the tall, grey entrance gates, and he sees glowing, lanterns swinging from the towers, lulled in the still breath of dusk. Their steps slow and everything winds down from there, a ball of yarn at the close of the day with the ends frayed.

"That wasn't too bad, was it?" she asks, as they reach the last few feet before the end. He makes a noncommittal noise and still does not look at her. She sighs and resigns herself. For a moment she stares hard at him, at the unreadable slant of his mouth, at the cold dark of his eyes (still the same ones, just a little emptier), at the longer, limper hair. There are lines beginning to form around his eyes. How much he is what he hates.

_Was I ever in love with you? _she wonders.

She whirls and kisses him on the lips and he cannot contain his surprise this time; she smiles to congratulate herself through the tasteless kiss. She tries to see if she can find _him_ beneath all the layers of the years and the cold cells and flickering candles and poison—

_Was I ever in love with you?_

Beneath the flat line of a mouth and loneliness and the grating eyes, the hating, and the long limp hair, the cloak without the pockets (_he needs those pockets_! _where will his hands go without them?_), and—

She can't find him.

He is gone. Maybe he was never there to begin with.

_No, _she thinks, _he was there once, a long, long time ago. He's lost. I can't bring him back._

She smiles because she finally understands, after all this time of pretending to understand, but not really. She draws away from his cold mouth, his lips so unused to kissing, shocked raw.

He looks at her for the first time. This time it's her turn to look away.

* * *

Just a little something. Sasuke makes me sad and angry. Grawr.I had a weird dream yesterday, and it sort of spurred me to write a Sasusaku. :sigh: And to think I used to love Sasuke dearly. 


End file.
